It is difficult to live with the fact that three people died in this vehicle last year and this stupid traffic is responsible for my plight," says Mohammed Chand, the ambulance driver pointing a finger accusingly at the bumper to bumper traffic.

It is around five in the evening and Old Delhi is bursting at the seams on a road that connects one of the largest hospitals in this part of the capital with the rest of the city. Mohammed who works as an ambulance driver with St Stephen's Hospital is driving around the hospital to provide what he calls "a sample of his daily grief".

The world moves in slow motion. After a while, the two middle-aged men in the car ahead of us and the auto rickshaw driver next to the ambulance seem rather familiar. It may have something to do with the fact that we have been playing nudge-nudge for close to half an hour.

The avowed benefits of the motor car suddenly seem rather dated. Forty-year-old Mohammed has been working with the St Stephen's Hospital in Old Delhi for the past five years and it was only since last year that he has had to deal with patients dying in his ambulance.

"Now the traffic has increased so much in Delhi that we are helpless. Last year there was this 50-something man with a cardiac arrest. His son was sitting next to him and there was nothing we could do. The traffic killed him," he says.

The capital has had to deal with a massive slowdown of its daily traffic thanks to a tremendous explosion of vehicular traffic. And although the number of motor vehicles has increased by 28 times between 1971 and 2011, the road length has increased by only four times. This has meant that traffic has slowed down at many places to 5 kmph in the city.

Ironically, Delhi is the one city that has pioneered alternative modes of transport such as the Metro and the Bus Rapid Transit System. And despite the availability of varied means of travel, the roads here appear to be more clogged than ever before. But if you think that the situation is alarming, then you need to understand the importance of the year 2020.

Experts who have used forecasting techniques to understand the extent of the traffic distress in the future say that in seven years every single inch of road space available in the city would be occupied by a vehicle leading to traffic jams that could last for days.

At the office of the Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (DIMTS), a joint venture between the Delhi government and IDFC, which is trying to work out traffic solutions for the city, a senior transport specialist says that the apocalyptic future has already been seen. "It's here," she says pointing to a page on a thick report on traffic projections for the future.

Future Imperfect

The page displays a map of Delhi with a red line traversing through every road of the city. The red line denotes traffic saturation. "Even if the government undertakes every single road widening work that it has taken up, the gridlock will happen seven years from now," says the expert who did not wish to be identified.

The report, she said, has been submitted to the state government and the DIMTS is vociferously seeking a larger share for public transport in order to prevent a catastrophe.

The share of public transport has fallen from 60% 10 years ago to 45%, and that is the fundamental reason for the pathetic condition of daily commuting in Delhi. The capital has around 81 lakh vehicles with over 1,400 new ones getting registered everyday.

The Delhi Masterplan aims for an 80:20 mix of public and private transport for 2021, but the officer says that setting up public transportation networks to that extent would be a tough ask.

"We are looking at a 72:28 ratio with significant expansion of the Metro and bus corridors apart from a mono rail network." There is also a plan to set up 'intelligent traffic corridors' that would be able to make real-time interventions to ensure that vehicles of varying speeds are carried forward to the next intersection without wasting too much time at signals.

Rules? What Rules?

"If we neglect transport planning in this city, we are headed for trouble. The gridlock is for real," says the expert pointing at the computer-generated image.

Special commissioner of traffic Sudhir Yadav agrees that the situation is alarming. For the senior-most officer handling traffic duties in the city, the problem with the city is that apart from the surfeit of vehicles fighting for space, one also has to account for the disdain with which people break rules in the city.

The Delhi Police had recently set up cameras to monitor traffic movement at select parts of the city and it was Yadav who got the first look. "I was shocked. At a distance of 400 metres and within eight hours, we spotted 4,500 violations," he says. The zigzag style of driving, which Indian motorists have now become notorious for, causes further confusion and slows down traffic.